ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The large blast that echoed through parts of the region Wednesday night was connected to the emergency disposal of improvised explosive devices, a member of the city’s bomb squad confirmed.
The blast rattled the area at 6 p.m. and could be heard in Allentown, Bethlehem and as far as Hanover Township.
“The loud boom was from The Allentown Bomb Squad conducting emergency disposal operations on improvised explosive devices [IEDs].”Allentown Fire Department Lt. Chad Ege
“The loud boom was from The Allentown Bomb Squad conducting emergency disposal operations on improvised explosive devices [IEDs],” Lt. Chad Ege said via email.
Ege said the IEDs had come from the residence of a deceased individual and that an investigation by the FBI and Allentown Bomb Squad continues.
A friend of the deceased gathered some of the deceased's belongings from a home outside of the Lehigh Valley, Ege said, and found what he described as "pipe bombs" within those belongings.
Authorities recovered the explosives from the friend's house.
"There was no criminal intent," Ege said in a phone interview early Thursday evening. "They didn't build them. They found these devices and they reached out to someone they knew that worked on these types of issues and they contacted the FBI, which got us involved to take care of these devices."
And the deceased individual that previously owned them? Ege said "that much is left with the FBI," and the bomb squad is more focused on addressing the potential hazard.
"But at no time was there a hazard or threat to anyone in the Lehigh Valley," he said.
Alert went out in neighboring municipality
A public notification was sent to residents of Salisbury Township from Police Chief Donald Sabo, though neighboring municipalities did not issue similar warnings prior to the blast.
"There will be a series of disposals from an emergency call in Lehigh County near Riverside Drive," the text reads.
"Noise/bang may travel with the cloud cover and rain along the river. Lehigh and Northampton County 911 Centers have been notified of the possible calls after this event."
Some residents shared that they heard it as far as the Wegmans grocery store on Route 512.
EPAWA meteorologist Bobby Martrich said the weather was to blame for the sound traveling so far due to a “significant temperature inversion."
Temperatures are typically cooler higher up in the atmosphere, but Wednesday night temperatures were warmer, Martrich said, which trapped the sound below the inversion.
“Sound is always trapped under inversion, where it echoes and reverberates, thus traveling farther,” he said.
Salisbury police told LehighValleyNews.com in a phone interview Wednesday night that "there is no active incident or anything."
The notification was sent out to those in the vicinity as "another agency" carried out the disposals within Salisbury Township, police said, but that "it had nothing to do with our agency."
Police said they were made aware of the event, but had "no clue" as to what was disposed of.
In 2022, emergency call centers were flooded with calls from concerned residents after TNT was detonated by the Allentown Bomb Squad, also in Salisbury Township, off of Constitution Drive.
"What's interesting this time is a lot of the people that heard it this time were in a different direction than those that heard it in 2022," Ege said. "So there's no rhyme or reason to it... We make the proper notifications as best as we can, but unfortunately people have to hear a loud bang every once in a while."
